SMRA-ERN has two Davis Vantage PRO 2 weather stations which broadcast the
weather every
30 minutes on the national APRS frequency of 144.390 MHz. One on Red
Mountain in our Twin Towers site, with a call-sign of K6ERN. The other one
is located on Southern Mountain in a County radio site with a call-sign of
WA6ZSN. Also on 144.390 MHz. Both are Davis PRO 2 weather stations.
For more information go here:
http://www.davisnet.com/weather/index.asp
. If you do not have radio equipment that will receive APRS weather
DATA, then follow this link: http://aprs.fi/ and click on K6ERN or WA6ZSN on
the map. You will also be able to see many more weather stations
throughout Southern California.

Packet Radio

SMRA-ERN has two Packet Nodes. One on Red Mountain in our Twin
Towers site, with a Node connect name of "RED". The other one
is located on South Mountain in a County radio site with a Node connect name of
"SOUTH". They are both on the Ventura County Packet frequency of 145.650
MHz. If you do not have Packet Radio equipment but want to learn more
about Packet Radio, read this to see if you might be interested in
getting into it:

Not long after this activity began in Canada, amateurs in the US became
interested in packet radio. In 1980, the U.S.
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted authorization for U.S.
amateurs to transmit ASCII codes via amateur radio.[4]
The first known amateur packet radio activity in the US occurred in
San
Francisco during December of 1980, when a
packet repeater was put into operation on
2 meters by
Hank
Magnuski KA6M, and the Pacific Packet Radio Society (PPRS).[5]
In keeping with the dominance of DARPA and ARPANET at the time, the nascent
amateur packet radio network was dubbed the
AMPRNet in
DARPA style. Magnuski obtained
IP address allocations in the 44.0.0.0 network for amateur radio use
worldwide.

By 1983, TAPR was offering the first TNC available in kit form. Packet radio
started becoming more and more popular across
North
America and by 1984 the first packet based
bulletin board systems began to appear. Packet radio proved its value for
emergency operations following the
crash of an Aeromexico airliner in a neighborhood in
Cerritos, CaliforniaLabor Day
weekend, 1986. Volunteers linked several key sites to pass text traffic via
packet radio which kept voice frequencies clear.

For an objective description of early developments in amateur packet radio,
refer to the article "Packet Radio in the Amateur Service".[7]